Apple pummels privacy-trampling Facebook

“In the early days of Apple, of course, the company’s Evil Empires were International Business Machines Corp. and Microsoft Corp., as encapsulated by two famous marketing campaigns. (Yes, children, IBM did make personal computers once upon a time,)” Shira Ovide writes for Bloomberg Quint. “IBM and Microsoft were convenient foils. They were lumbering, vicious and uncool — the opposite of what Apple wanted to be.”

“Then early in this decade, Google became Apple’s villain. The two companies had collaborated closely on the Safari web browser and the original iPhone, but the good times ended when Steve Jobs believed Google’s Android operating system for smartphones ripped off the iPhone,” Ovide writes. “It was clear this week that Facebook Inc. has become Apple’s new supervillain.”

“During its developer conference on Monday, Apple unveiled changes to its Safari web browser, which will now ask people for permission for the kind of tracking that Facebook does. An Apple executive showed an image of the new feature with Facebook as the example of the digital-privacy compromises that Apple is trying to root out,” Ovide writes. “(A Facebook executive countered that the Safari feature seems to hurt Google more than it might hurt his company.)”

MacDailyNews Take: A perfect twofer.

“Apple’s beef with Facebook is odd. Unlike Apple’s past antagonists, Facebook is not a competitor. Apple has little to gain financially or strategically if Facebook falls,” Ovide writes. “Apple may truly believe that Facebook is bad for the world and that its quibble with the social network is philosophical rather than financial. But Apple needs to be careful. It’s cool to bash other companies when you’re an underdog. It’s not cool to punch down when you’re the most valuable public company in the world — on your way to the $1 trillion market cap milestone. ”

MacDailyNews Take: Oh, puleeze. Facebook deserves every kick in the teeth it gets times ten.

Apple stands for privacy. In this case, unfortunately, people first need to realize what’s been stolen from them before they value it. Apple’s bashing generates coverage like Ovide’s or, in other words, free advertising. Steve Jobs’ perfected it.

Each of the companies, products, and services that Apple has attacked over the years were copied poorly from Apple, inherently evil, or both.

As many as 14 million Facebook users who thought they were posting items they only wanted their friends or smaller groups to see may have been posting that content publicly, the company said Thursday.

According to Facebook, a software bug — which was live for 10 days in May — updated the audience for some users’ posts to “public” without any warning. Facebook typically lets users select the audiences who get to see posts; that setting is “sticky,” which means it remains the default until it is manually updated.

Facebook was unclear about how many of the 14 million people may have posted to friends without realizing they were sharing that information to a much broader public audience. The company said it will begin to alert people who were impacted immediately….

Facebook will never fall. Facebook’s share price will easily outperform Apple’s share price for years to come. All the biggest investors love the quick and easy profitability of data-harvesting companies. They rally to the call of profits before privacy. Consumers are the most valuable products on the planet. Use them to the max. Consumers don’t care as long as they get ‘free’ services.
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Apple could easily become the biggest data-harvesting company in the world, and be the darling of Wall Street, if only they could shed their privacy fetish. They claim privacy differentiates their products, but few consumers seem to value it, and Apple demonstrated they’ll compromise with China, the Feds, etc. up to a point, so why keep dandling a toothless shibboleth before an indifferent market? It’s a brave new world and we all know we’re being watched, so what’s the big deal? AAPL investors want to know. Besides, unchaining Apple’s Siri from her privacy dog-collar would beat down Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana and all the rest, resulting in vastly increased customer satisfaction to the delight of CEO Tim Cook. Sales would mushroom, the endless natter of petulant complaints would finally subside and Apple would get so f***ing rich they could release new Mac Pro machines without experiencing any rectal pain. They could all be just faster cheese graters, and the design pundits could prattle all they wanted about lost mojo or about lack of innovation but it would not matter because these little men would have zero power to move the needle on Apple’s share price anymore. I’d still expect to run into them from time to time — in their new jobs at the carwash.
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Amnesty International is launching a new social media campaign targeting Apple over its betrayal of millions of Chinese iCloud users by recklessly making their personal data vulnerable to the arbitrary scrutiny of the Chinese government.